MikesHomeBiz Blog

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In making a selection from the multitude of home business opportunities available for you to choose from, there are significant advantages of picking some form of online business, rather than going with a more conventional business.

We’ve discussed turning a hobby or an interest into a business, and while this may have much appeal at the first impression, the disadvantages are usually linked to the logistical issues, like marketing your products. Most conventional businesses also require significant capital costs, especially at start-up.

The big plus for an online business is the minimal costs involved in getting started. It’s unnecessary to have special premises, with the associated rental costs, which can cripple a new business. You’re not going to need special planning or licensing permission, which can also be a bureaucratic nightmare, in some countries.

All you need is a computer, with internet access, preferably by broadband. You don’t want to block your telephone line, by using a dial-up system, while this also helps to contain the day to day costs of working online. You’ll be spending long periods online, so the ease of access by broadband is a definite plus.

If you’re not a computer expert, don’t be too concerned – there is nothing too complicated that you can’t learn with a little determination. The internet business community is amazingly supportive, and any worthwhile business will include comprehensive training and support.

What options are out there if you’re then going to look at starting an online business from home? If you do some searching on the internet, you’ll be inundated with a barrage of information, resulting in an information overload! Your next problem is how to make the right selection from this huge range of possibilities, most claiming to make you wealthy in just a short time. It’s a good idea to spend some time searching the ‘net, if only to get an idea of the massive range of options out there.

Be careful, though! The internet is loaded with clever ways of separating you from your money – scams abound! Do have a look around, as you may come across something really great.

Let’s look at some ways of helping you to sort the “wheat from the chaff.”

1. Have a close look at the website in each case. Is it professionally presented, or is it merely loaded with gimmicks?

2. How long has the business offered been in existence?

3. Read the personal profiles of the key personalities involved. Do they look like the kind of people you want to do business with? Do they offer something that at least (sounds) genuine?

4. Avoid anything that offers an instant conversion into millionaire status! Business doesn’t work like that. Most offers have a Disclaimer window. Read it carefully, to form your own impression of the earnings to be made.

5. What products or services are on offer? Would you be happy to be associated with the products? Anything that isn’t linked to real, credible products or services might well be a scam, or at least may be a pyramid scheme.

6. How much do you have to pay, and what do you get in exchange for your hard-earned cash? Be sure that you are aware of all the costs involved. Be careful of giving away your credit-card details to anyone, until you’re sure that this is the right opportunity for you. Make sure that there’s an unsubscribe link, in case you have second thoughts.

If you’ve been debating the idea of starting a home business, but have no idea of what to do, or where to start, then you’re about normal! You’ll need to do some research about the huge variety of options available, but in order to achieve anything at all you’ll need to narrow down the range of options to something manageable.

Most people who decide to start a home business, do so with the idea of making some extra cash initially, and with a secondary hope that they might be able to go full-time eventually. Let us examine some of the options available, to put an element of logic into the decision-making process.

Perhaps the first question is whether you already have some idea of what you’d like to do, but don’t know where to start. Perhaps the obvious place to start is to look at something that you enjoy doing. It is possible to turn an interest or a hobby into a business.

You may have a special interest in arts and crafts, and it would be possible to make goods for sale, possibly from a website. There are some unfortunate limitations, imposed by the time it would take you to produce an article for sale, and the relationship between this and a realistic selling price for the article. In some ways this type of business would be best operated from a small shop, where interested customers can see and touch the merchandise. It might be possible to start off by putting articles regularly on display at a monthly craft market, to build up a professional reputation for yourself.

If your aim is only to supplement your income, this seems to be possible, given one or two of the variables, such as a venue to display and sell your products.
These products are mainly impulse purchases, in that someone seeing an attractive article will buy it on the spur of the moment. It is logistically very difficult to be able to make sufficient income from these products to produce them full time.

Some skills in carpentry could be turned into a source of income, by making special items of furniture, or hand-making built-in cupboards for bedrooms. You would need to do some careful research into costs versus realistic selling prices, in order to see if your products would be commercially viable. A marketing strategy would be essential, as you’d need to advertise your products to find potential customers. If you were to start something like this off on a part-time basis, you could then build up a client-base over time, while you manufacture your products, working evenings and weekends.

One of the simplest ways to earn cash in your spare time is if you have a book-keeping qualification and experience. Much of this can be done by working with your clients via e-mail and fax. There are numerous opportunities on the internet for this type of work, and one only has to look carefully to select the best opportunity for your skills and interests.

Data collection is another readily available opportunity, if you have access to a computer and the internet. These jobs lend themselves to working from home, and it is only necessary to work out the volume of typing needed to make a living, before venturing into one of these opportunities. Do take the time to research the position carefully, so that the viability of the business is realistic, in relation to the time needed to turn a sufficient volume of work.

The unfortunate down-side to all these options is the limitation imposed by the volume of work that you can produce in a reasonable period of time. Remember there’s only one of you, and the only way to make more money is by spending more time working. Be careful that you don’t end up working even longer hours at home than you might have done in an ordinary day job!

In our next discussion along this theme, we’ll look at other options which allow you to leverage your time, by enlisting others to work with you.

We’ve previously discussed some of the reasons for considering starting a home business; especially those revolving around insecurity in the job-market, world wide. Today we continue along this theme, examining more reasons for deciding to go on your own. It’s extremely important to think these issues through, so that the goals you seek are in line with your hopes and aspirations from your home business.

Most people need a little extra cash, on a month to month basis. It’s only the super-wealthy who might admit that they don’t need a little extra cash to make ends meet! If you’re on of those fortunate few – then read no further! For the rest of us, life is always a battle to make ends meet, especially when the unexpected crops up, and we no sooner seem to have recovered from one problem, when the next one comes along.

Thus a very common reason to think of starting a home business (part-time) is for this very reason. This is indeed valid, but if the need is just for a little extra cash, then there’s no call to quit your day job. It’s then a question of getting your mind around the amount of money which would make the difference you seek.

Perhaps it’s for the little extras which make life easier, or the cash to take the family away for a much needed holiday once a year, but if this is your line of thought, do try to quantify what you’re looking for, because this will have a definite bearing on what you choose to do, and how much time and effort it will take to raise the cash to pay for your needs.

You may be concerned about further education for your children, and the inevitable costs associated with this. Again, it’s not that difficult to quantify these costs, bearing in mind the period of time also involved. You’re doing yourself a favour, if you’re thinking of this well in advance, so that you then have time on your side.

Most people go through periods when they’re unhappy at work, for one reason or another. It’s when this unhappiness doesn’t go away after a period that one is tempted to change jobs, to try something else. Don’t feel alone, if this is the case, your feelings are only human, and if you act reasonably and sensibly, there are solutions out there.

This is a much bigger issue than just needing a little spare cash – as it possibly involves changing your job, or replacing it with your own business. The quantum is much larger, and the implications are much more serious in this case. Should you think this through, and come to the conclusion that the route you want to follow is to quit your job and work from home then the timing becomes critical. It’s most unlikely you’ll be able to start a home business and replace your income overnight.

To earn sufficient income from home to sustain you and your family is eminently possible, but will take time. Whatever happens don’t believe the hype about earning huge sums of money instantly. Life and reality unfortunately don’t work that way. Starting a business takes time, effort and commitment, all in significant quantities, but you’ll need either to start off part-time, unless you’re lucky enough to have sufficient reserves to sustain yourself for a period of time, while you get a business off the ground.

There is a growing trend world-wide for people to choose to work from home for any of a wide range of reasons. Some of us will remember how our parents worked for one company for a lifetime, collected a gold watch after 25 years of service, and retired at sixty-five or thereabouts to live in reasonable security on a company pension.

Those were the days before inflation became the bugbear of investments, and companies switched to providing Provident Funds, so that the employees carry the risk of providing for their old-age. Huge unfunded deficits still linger around the world where many of the remaining company and even state pensions are massively under-funded and where the old concept of a guaranteed pension has become a bad word.

Retrenchment was an almost unheard-of concept until comparatively recent times, where it’s not unusual for an individual to be retrenched two or three times during a working lifetime.

What all of this means, is that the old idea of aiming for the “security” of a job with a large company is no longer what it used to be. In some ways this old paternalistic approach was inappropriate in many ways, but for better or for worse, those days are gone, forever.

The golden rule then is to take responsibility for yourself, your life and your future, because no-one else will do it for you! There is no shock quite like that of being called into the boss’ office only to be told that your services are no longer required, and that your severance package is ready for collection at the pay office.

If you’re unprepared for this, the sudden realization that you’re on your own, and that you’ll have to make massive changes merely to survive financially is traumatic, at least. The emotional shock can scar an individual irreparably, having to deal with loss of self esteem, and feelings of failure.

All of this is not meant to sound like doom and gloom but is meant to portray the unfortunate reality of life today. How different these feelings can be if the individual has put contingency plans into place, well in advance.

This then is perhaps one of the most important reasons to have started a home business, initially part-time, to make provision for the dreaded day, should it arrive. If the day doesn’t arrive, it’s extremely comforting to have another plan up one’s sleeve, just in case. The added bonus of some extra income in the interim is yet another advantage!

In another article in the series, we’ll look at some other reasons for starting your own business, and we’ll consider some of the options you may wish to consider in deciding what to do, from the huge range of top home businesses that are available, and from which you may choose.

We’ve already discussed setting up and registering a blog-site. You should ideally blog at least twice a week, to keep the content alive and fresh. The search engines thrive on fresh, original content.

Perhaps initially write a series of articles about the decision-making you went through, before finally making a start in your own home business. People looking to start their own home businesses will be interested to hear how you made your own personal decisions in selecting the type of home business which was best for you.

Start perhaps with your decision to start a home business – what was your motivation? Most people think about the idea often enough, but it’s too easy to become trapped in the day to day routine of going to work, and surviving from one month-end to the next. Financial needs are amongst the most common reasons for wanting to leave your job, and to go it alone.

Personal circumstances are often a strong motivational factor, such as wanting to be able to spend more time with children, or to care for a parent who lives with you. Discuss your own reasons for making the break, and explain whether you started part-time from home, or whether you were able to quit working to go it alone.

It’s a good idea to discuss the financial factors involved, and how you were able to cope financially, especially during the early stages. This is the kind of open discussion that is absolutely invaluable to someone considering going the same route.

Another extremely useful discussion would be about managing children while working from home. This is a very common problem for home business owners, until they’ve come up with workable solutions to manage their time and get some work done, along with the distractions that children inevitably will create.

Above all, write from the heart. Share the problems you’ve experienced, and discuss the solutions you found for those problems. By now you will have worked out some sort of daily routine, so that there is adequate time for you to deal with business related issues, and still be able to have quality time with your family. How did you work this out?

Anything worth doing calls for sacrifices, both personal and financial. Life is about making compromises, and a brief chat about handling these personally, will make compelling reading for those wanting to follow in your footsteps.

Don’t be afraid to admit that you made some mistakes along the way, but discuss how you realized what was wrong, and what steps you took to correct the problem. Again, some personal advice from the heart will be well received, and your readers will be grateful to you for sharing these with them, especially when you may then be able to help them avoid making the same mistakes!

Blogging is an excellent way to boost your business. If you’re already running an online business, you have a store of useful information about your experiences in getting this far. Blogging is then a way to share your experiences with others.

Firstly you need to acquire a blogsite. A quick search of the internet will produce many options which are freely available. In fact the blog offers from the major search engines are all extremely attractive, offer many options to you, and above all, are very user-friendly!

Have look at the options available, and select an option which suits your business style and image. You can choose from a range of themes and templates, while choosing colours to make your blog personal, and different from all the others.

You’ll be guided through the selection of a name for your blog, and you’ll find that some of the popular names have already been taken up. Choose something that compliments your business, and that has a professional ring to it. Registering your blog takes only a few minutes, and then you can get to work!

It’s a good idea to personalize your blog, to reflect something of yourself, even if it is a business site. It’s quite simple to upload a picture of yourself, so that your visitors can see that you’re a real person. You don’t have to have film-star looks – but a small image adds that personal touch.

You also have the option to write a brief profile about yourself – so that interested visitors can learn a little about you, and where you’ve come from. A brief history of your work experience is important, again to show who you are. You don’t need to have been a top-flight executive in a global company! People will be just as interested to hear that you’ve had an ordinary job, doing anything!

The fact that you might have been a teacher, a truck-driver or a lawyer matters not one iota. What makes you an expert is that you’ve made the break and started your own home business. You then have some experiences to share which will be of value to others facing personal decisions about starting their own top home businesses.

In your profile, tell your visitors where you live in the world, and share something about your interests. This also adds a personal touch, and gives you more credibility in the minds of your readers. Remember above all, that even a business blog is still your own personal site.

It’s important to add a link to your website, so that your visitors can look further to see the range of products or services you have to offer. If they’ve found a visit to your blog worthwhile, interesting and above all informative, they’ll be much more likely to visit your website for more information. Providing a link makes this very simple for the visitor. You’ll find out how to do this by going into the dashboard or menu for your blog, and follow the simple instructions. If you have a problem, click on the magic help tab for assistance.

There’ll be more tips about growing your business by blogging later in this series.
Thanks for taking the time to visit.

Affiliate marketing programmes have been around for some time now, but remain one of the best ways for almost anyone to make money online. Although scams still abound, it is fairly straightforward to avoid these by looking for a programme that is well presented, and offers real credible products or services. A good test is also to check to see how long the programme has been in existence.

The principle is that you, the webmaster earn money by referring visitors to a merchant’s products or services by advertising them on your website. It’s not really a problem if you don’t have your own website, as the more reputable programmes offer a free website as part of the deal. Having done a little research into the legitimacy of the programme, it’s then essential to review the products or services offered, to ensure that they are genuine, and that you feel confident about endorsing them personally.

You’ll also need to spend time thoroughly familiarizing yourself with the products, so that you understand the features and benefits of all, in case you are asked questions about them. Should a prospective affiliate ask your opinion about any aspect of them, you’ll need to be able to answer in an authoritative way.

Affiliate marketing is still one of the easiest ways for a new website owner to make money online. It’s your key to owning and running your own top home business. You’ll be provided with the necessary links to the vendors’ sites and these can quite simply be added to your site. A ready made affiliate marketing programme comes with a site already set up to do all of this. It will be provided in your name, with a ready made link so that your commissions can be credited to you in due course.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of joining a well established affiliate programme, is that once your site is set up, and commissioned, you don’t need to do any direct selling. Your role is to attract visitors to your site, by making it attractive and informative, and by providing as many back-links as possible. Once visitors join the programme, you‘ll need to maintain contact with your affiliates, with encouragement and advice if needed.

An affiliate programme that links to multiple opportunities is the ideal. In this way you benefit from the choices open to your visitors, and you increase the odds of a successful closure by your visitors. The ideal is a single programme that offers up to five or six opportunities in one package deal. They can all be advertised on the one site, and the availability of some choice is undoubtedly more attractive to a prospective affiliate.

Of all the top home businesses available, participating in an affiliate marketing programme remains one of the simplest and most attractive options, especially to the new business owner.

Article writing is undeniably an excellent marketing tool for any online business. We discuss some simple tips and ideas to make the writing and publishing processes as effective as possible. My suggestions are:

Write your article in a word document, and pre-format your document to about sixty to sixty-five characters per line including spaces, as this is the most commonly accepted format for internet articles, required by most Article Directories.

Use a simple font such as Arial, with a font size of about 12. Keep the fancy fonts for personal correspondence and other uses. My suggestion is to save your articles in a folder system, for easy reference. You could group them by time period or by subject matter – for simplicity’s sake I choose to group each two-month batch of articles in a separate folder.

There are several excellent programmes for converting your articles into Text for ease of publication.  Simply copy and paste your document and save again as a text document. Most article directories readily accept this format for publication without any amendment. Again, you’ll find that the directories provide you with a standard layout for submitting your articles for publication. It’s then quite simple again to copy and paste your article into the boxes provided.

Take a little time to proof-read your article again after submission, to ensure that the gremlins haven’t altered your layout. If you’ve used bullet-points or numbered sentences, you may have to uncheck the Autoformat box for your article to ensure that each point begins on a new line. Generally keep your layout as simple as possible, without the use of complicated structures or punctuation, as this also aids the conversion process for publication.

There are many Article Directories available to you. Some offer a limited service free of charge. Much depends on your budget and the time you have available. You can manually submit your articles to each of a number of directories, or if your finances permit you can select one of the directories which will redirect your articles to a number of other directories. Thus one manual submission is automatically passed on to several others.

There may be an initial signing-up process for each additional directory, which takes some time and effort to complete, but thereafter the process is much quicker.

Don’t forget to design your resource box very carefully. This is your only opportunity to tell a little about yourself and to provide links to your web and blog sites. Your article cannot contain any advertising material, or you will be accused of spamming and may be blacklisted.
My personal preference is to publish articles on my blog sites in addition to submitting them to the directories, as all of these help to generate the all-important traffic necessary to grow and market my business.

I trust that you will have found these tips of some use to you. Above all, take the plunge and start writing!

One of the most effective means of marketing your Website is by writing business related articles. Ordinary people like you and me are more than capable of writing articles about their own experiences.

Writing and distributing articles is an extremely effective way of attracting visitors to your site. Don’t believe that you need years of experience to be able to write articles. Once you’ve started your own online business, and have been through a few hoops, you’ll already know far more than the millions of people online, who’re looking for information!

Write from your own experiences in getting started with your internet business. Help other people through the elimination process you’ve been through, in examining the options you considered, and describe what prompted you to go the route you’ve chosen.

You will certainly have made some mistakes along the way. Write about them, so that others will benefit from your experiences. Describe the steps you took to correct your mistakes, and in this way you will be seen as a genuine, helpful person, who is prepared to share your experience, to the benefit of others.

You don’t need fancy linguistic skills to write articles; write in plain, simple, down to earth English. It’s a good idea also to read articles by other authors, to get ideas about style and content and you’ll find that reading articles will trigger your own thought processes, and then you’re ready to have a go!

Once you start writing, you’ll find that the ideas and the words suddenly start to flow. When that happens – keep going and don’t get too bogged down with grammar and spelling. You will need to correct these later, but try not to interrupt your creative flow.

Once your readers realize that your site offers useful information which can assist them in establishing their own businesses, they will come back for more information. The trick then is to keep a ready supply of fresh, informative articles, to be published once or twice a week. The search engines love fresh content, and this will move your site up in the page rankings.

Once you’ve written your articles – spend time proof-reading very carefully. You will quickly lose credibility if your article is thick with grammatical or spelling errors, and your expert status will be lost. Your computer has a spell-check, so do use it.

Keep paragraphs no longer than two or three sentences – this makes for much easier reading than long, complicated paragraphs. This also helps reinforce a punchy direct style which has more impact on your reader. Remember you’re writing to provide information, so avoid long flowery phrases and overly complicated explanations.

Articles should ideally be between about 450 and 600 words long. Most readers are looking for a quick overview, and something too long will deter many of them from reading your whole article. Cover the points you wish to make clearly and succinctly, rather than in too much detail.

Remember of course that you’ll also get better with practice, so break the ice and have a go! It will be worth the effort for sure.

We’ll discuss more tips and ideas about writing and publishing articles in this current series.

The chances are that if you have a standard, mass-market style website, most visitors will glance at it and quickly move on.

Statistics tell us many things about internet users, but amongst the most useful to us as site-owners are the following:

1. They’re looking for information

2. They’re mostly put off by hard-sell advertising.

3. They’re easily discouraged if it’s difficult to find what they’re looking for.

4. If they don’t find the site visually appealing they will move on quickly.

5. They are more likely to read on if the site has a personal feel to it.

Given the above, the odds are stacked against us in hoping to attract and retain the interest of the first time visitor. Let us examine some tips to overcome these obstacles, so as to move the odds somewhat in our favour.

The first impression is undoubtedly the visual one. A site that is poorly constructed, muddled or unattractive to look at doesn’t even get out of the starting blocks! The logic is very simple: if the site owner doesn’t have the interest and initiative to make his site look good to the visitor, it’s likely that he pays as little attention to its content.

Make your site look really appealing, by the careful use of colour, and make the layout such that it is easy to find the information the visitor is seeking. Although it’s an idea to use technology to include some clever features, don’t make it too gimmicky or those benefits will be lost. You will need something eye-catching, positioned at the top of your home-page to capture the visitor’s attention.

Remember to focus on the benefits to the visitor – what’s in it for him or her?

Remember your visitor is not looking to buy anything – she wants information. Make that information easily available, in an appealing way. It’s a good idea to offer a useful gift such as a free training programme or newsletter.

Position yourself as an expert in your field. It’s not necessary to claim that massive earnings are likely, but rather to show that you’ve been there got the T-shirt and that you’re prepared to share the information required to make a success of this opportunity. Your visitor can then make her own selection from the top home businesses available to her.

In other words, “This is the information you need and these are the benefits to you.”

If you don’t have web-design skills or even a flair for this, pay someone to help you, or to do it for you. A professional-looking website would be more likely to offer something worthwhile, than something carelessly designed that looks as though it’s been thrown together.

Sometimes the technical gurus become so involved with technology, that they overlook the simple issues. Keep it simple to navigate around the site, particularly so that the information your visitor is looking for can be easily accessed.

If you provide a number of options from which to select, keep the instructions clear and simple. You’d be surprised how difficult it is sometimes to find the
“Yes–I want it” option in some sites!

Personalize your site so that it doesn’t look just like another of the mass produced sites. If you are able to tell a little about yourself and how your life has changed for the better, you have an increased chance of persuading your visitor to take a closer look at your offer.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. I sincerely hope that you have found the information useful or thought provoking.